1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an on-vehicle information terminal, and more particularly to an on-vehicle information terminal for conducting communication with respect to a base station that is located on a road.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, systems have been popularized in which communication is conducted between a base station that is located on a road and a mobile station that is mounted on a vehicle, to thereby conduct electronic toll collection at a toll gate (generally called “ETC”) . In those systems, electric wave communication is conducted between an ETC road device (base station) at the toll gate side and an ETC on-vehicle device (mobile station) at the vehicle side, to automatically collect the tolls of a toll road.
There have been proposed various systems that conduct other services by using the communication system used in those ETC systems (for example, refer to JP 2002-269607 A). In JP 2002-269607 A, there are proposed a system in which communication is conducted together with data other than communication data required to automatically collect the toll to supply information to a passenger in a vehicle when electric wave communication is conducted between the ETC road device (base station) at the toll gate side and ETC on-vehicle device (mobile station) at the vehicle side, or an advertisement delivery system that conducts an advertisement delivery at the time of communication or a discount at the time of receiving the advertisement.
On the other hand, in a VICS (vehicle information and communication system) that has been progressively diffused in recent years, road information such as traffic jam information is supplied from a base station that is located on a road.
In the system that supplies information at higher level by using data that has been received by the road information supplying means, it is difficult for a user to sort out useful data among a large amount of delivered data.
In order to solve the above problem, there has been proposed a navigation device in which plural pieces of information that have been received from the base station located on a road is classified and selected so that information required by the user is readily obtained (for example, refer to JP 2002-319089 A).
In addition, at the time of outputting data that has been received from the base station, when another data high in priority is received, data high in priority is outputted, and when the output of data high in priority is finished, original data that is being now reproduced is continuously outputted, to thereby improve the convenience of the user (for example, JP 2003-85689 A).
In the conventional on-vehicle information terminal disclosed in JP 2002-319089 A and JP 2003-85689 A, since data is sorted out according to the priority that is set according to the priority that is set in correspondence with the category of data in advance, the user is capable of obtaining necessary information without paying specific attention to data sorting out. However, the necessity of data changes according to the status, and there has arisen such a problem that the necessary information is not always selected when a fixed priority which is set in advance is used. Also, since the necessity of data depends on the user's preference, there has arisen such a problem that information required by the user is not always selected when the predetermined fixed priority is used.